Special bank for SMEs debate revived
Former Rector of the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration, Professor Stephen Adei, has called on the government to establish a special development bank that will take care of the needs of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the country.
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He said the bank should be established with a seed funding of not less than US$100 million to help propel the development of SMEs.
He said this was because of the challenges in the provision of finance to the SME sector.
Professor Adei said this when he delivered his keynote address at the 2nd annual SME Ghana Awards on September 30.
The event was organised by Imagine 8, an event management company, and it was on the theme “Advancing SMEs through ICT”.
Professor Adei advised the government that, it was about time it accepted the fact that, Ghana is a predominantly an SME economy, and should therefore tailor its policies and frameworks around the SME sector.
He urged the government to provide the necessary infrastructure and implement programmes that would favour SMEs in the country.
He also stressed the need for the government to improve on the economy’s competitiveness globally.
“We are losing ground on international competitiveness as we are currently ranked at 111th. Our SMEs will never do well if we fail to improve on our competitiveness globally,” he said.
He also charged the government to support SMEs by giving them free tax exemptions for their first five years of their businesses since that was the period to assess if the business would grow or collapse.
SMEs, on the other hand, were advised to have one voice to enable the political powers to listen to them.
Awards
The Greater Accra Poultry Farmers Association (GPFA) emerged the overall winners on the night, while the High Impact Personality (HIP) award went to Mr Joe Tackie for his tremendous contribution to members in the field of mentoring, tutoring and consultancy services.
Some companies which also won awards include; Accents and Arts, Agro Africa Limited, Koko King Limited, Prefos Limited, ICPS Limited, Afari Community Hospital, Porters House Christian Academy, Safety World Engineering and Consulting Limited, Nallem Clothing, and One Plus One Furniture City Limited.